Dear Mr. Kamal Haasan,

I have watched the Telugu Version of your latest film Vishwaroopam today and I liked it. It is certainly not the best film you have acted or directed by a long shot but certainly it kept me hooked for most of its duration. But unfortunately the film will be remembered for all the wrong reasons probably because you did not have enough trust in the right reasons the film had to impress the audiences.

I cast this allegation in reference to the scene where you ask Andrea to taste the chicken to see if everything is fine with it. Now, I am a Brahmin and a meat eater who comes from a family of devout Brahmins but that was not the reason I am writing against that scene. It was not offensive even by a least bit, far from it when I first saw the scene, I felt it was downright silly, and irrelevant. I would have laughed at it if it had come in a film by a lesser filmmaker because that would have been the reason he put the scene in the film. But I’m not sure you share the same intention here. My outrage is directed against your intentions in filming that scene. You might point out to your tongue dutifully in cheek about this but I can’t see the place for it in the film had it been directed by Mani Ratnam or Shankar or may be you would have ad-libbed it anyway. I refuse to believe that you were naïve enough not to know that this will have some repercussions or that it was just made as an afterthought. Or may be the entire point to it is that a 90 crore film can use a controversy or 90. I don’t know. Pardon my Ignorance.

The paraphernalia of Indian Cinema consists of item songs, gravity defying stunts, chaotic music and pelvic thrusts parading as dance, so to talk about an immaterial piece of cinematic absurdity might appear futile and stupid on my part but I want to bring to your notice one of the interviews you recently gave to Telugu Film Director S S Rajamouli. During the course of the interview, you condemned songs in films saying that they act as barriers to the flow of cinema and most of them are avoidable. So measuring your film by the same yardstick you have for films I request you to enlighten the importance of this particular scene in the narrative flow of your film. It neither contributes to the story, nor the portrayal of Andrea as a Brahmin attributes any significance to it. 

In the same interview, you have also pointed out that cinema is eating into other arts and that they should have independent recognition so that cinema can remain what it should be and the other arts can achieve their due recognition. In the wake of that comment, I think this particular dialogue belongs to a standup comedy act but not in a film like Vishwaroopam. Knowing your versatility as an artiste I’m certain you would do a great job at that as well.

Despite of all this rant, I would continue to watch your movies because I feel you are a great artiste still capable of delivering great films, but I’m disheartened to say that I lost a lot of respect I had for you.

Yours truly,
Veturi Sarma